


Food and story

by Kit



Series: Food and story [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Black Eagles Mercedes von Martriz, Blue Lions Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Character Study, Dancer Linhardt or Dancer Felix, F/F, Forgiveness, Goddess Tower (Fire Emblem), Jealousy, Mercedes uses food to show affection and you cannot tell me otherwise, Pining, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Romantic Fluff, White Heron Cup, Who hates it more?, bread as a love language, colour theory via eyeshadow, dorothea and mercedes talking in too many layers, gratuitous crest lore, mercedes is not always as good at therapy as she wishes she was, mixing Mercedes and Ingrid's Goddess Tower scenes was surprisingly fun, one-sided merciexannette, pricky cactus children, spoilers for annette and mercedes B support, we were robbed of an Ingrid and Mercedes A support
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22140502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: “You’re in my opera now,” Dorothea declares. “Mercedes von Martriz, the revolutionary nun.”“I havenever—”“—well,” says Dorothea. “Perhaps not a nun, not with the way you look at Ingrid. And don’t worry—” this, to a chorus of splutters, her hands spread wide. “Ingridislooking at you right back.”Have some Academy Phase character-study and yearning.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Mercedes von Martritz, Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Mercedes von Martritz
Series: Food and story [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740682
Comments: 56
Kudos: 114





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemonsharks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/gifts).



Mercedes, Annette and Ingrid are working in the kitchens. Annie has flour in her hair and half-formed song in her mouth, while Ingrid looks at half-kneaded bread dough as if it might bite her.

“Is there something on my face, Mercedes?” she says, flexing her sticky fingers and wincing as they take full seconds to come apart from the mess, trailing waterlogged dough behind.

“Oh no,” says Mercedes, leaning around Annette to dust her hands in surplus flour. “Not at all.”

“There could be,” says Annette, wicked. “Just a _little_ bit of shadow, Ingrid, you’d look so striking—”

“—I don’t _need…”_

Mercedes watches Ingrid splutter. She’s right, of course. Ingrid, all long bones and lovely hair, her muscles honed on horseback and on mountainsides, needs no adornment. It would, though, be fine to paint those eyes. She imagines getting the other woman still enough to try it, wonders whether Ingrid might blush under Mercedes fingertips. Blush in ways, a small, traitorous part of her whispers, Annie never has.

“Hush, both of you,” she says, keeping her smile bright as Annette looks at her with raised brows, catching something in Mercedes’s voice that she doesn’t want to think about. “Ingrid, here. Let me help.”

Mercedes shifts between them, her floured hands covering Ingrid’s sticky ones, shaping the dough and letting it get up to no more nonsense, just the way she was taught.

“Wet dough actually makes better bread,” she tells Ingrid, whose hands work nervously beneath her own. “But it takes some practice.”

Ingrid chuckles. She is pink to the tops of her ears, and Mercedes isn’t sure what to do with that information, but she thinks she is going to treasure it.

“In this arena,” Ingrid says, “Practice is something I _do not_ have.”

“You’ll get there,” Mercedes says, drawing back and making encouraging noises as Ingrid shapes the dough on her own.

Annette, meanwhile, has gone back to mixing sugar and cinnamon, singing under her breath a new ballad of rolls and scrolls and crescent moon folds and soldier soles and… “Blast, I need something that rhymes with ‘old’ that…um…isn’t ‘old’? Mercie, help me…”

Mercedes laughs. She shakes her head. She watches. 

Watching Ingrid with Felix and Sylvain is a little like seeing characters in a play. Glorious shadow puppets, those three. Best friends, who bicker and haul each other from schoolroom to battlefield and back again, one always watching the other where it counts.

Mercedes knows they are more complicated. Most bodies are, even Sylvain’s. Felix seems resentful of every tie between himself and the other two, while Ingrid _yearns_. Sometimes, Mercedes images that tall, strong body full-up with yearning: for food, for stories, for friendship and safety and a dead young man, and that yearning turns her stiff and sharp and awkward around all her edges. Mercedes watches Felix’s exasperation and Sylvain’s obliviousness, and it makes her heart hurt.

Mercedes is a dreadful storyteller. She tried with Emile, but the boy always rolled his eyes and took over, even when his mouth was stuffed half full with sweets. Their mother had been too tired for stories, and so she’d never passed on the knack, if she’d even had it at all. Thinking of her mother, feeling her in the weight of her own hair, the press of her own lip between her teeth, Mercedes isn’t sure.

So stories, Mercie cannot give. If she could return dead young men, she’d have—

\--well. The world would be a very different place. But she _can_ do something about friendship and safety and maybe even choice. And food. Mercedes von Martriz has usually been able to do something about food.

She pinches off a piece of dough from the larger mass, leans between both girls to dip it in cinnamon sugar, and places the morsel against Ingrid’s lips. She feels them part. Swallows a little in reflex as she feels the faint pressure of tongue against the sugar granules. Annette is still singing. Ingrid’s eyes are wide. 

“Try this,” Mercedes says. “The better you get, the more you’ll _want_ to practice, don’t you think?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caspar's tendancy to plunge naked into the lake was inspired by garbage_dono's absolutely bloody delightful _[In all things, patience.]()_

Fighting with Annie is uncomfortable. All fights are, of course. Mercedes is no Felix, to relish the back-and-forth and find something sharp and clean in it; no Sylvain, who seems to enjoy the way verbal barbs sting, until he’s grinning at you with blood on his teeth, three steps further ahead than anyone expects. She isn’t even Annie, who enjoys drawing every last drop of logic from professor Manuela’s equations, glaring at her textbooks until forumulae make sense.

Mercedes barely remembers _why_ they fought – only that a shopping trip turned into a scene where she was made too much of, felt raw and exposed while Annette took up space the way only those who have never been punished for it can manage.

(Unfair. _Unfair_. Annette has spent a life half-unseen and she _should_ be clamourous and bright and everything she wants. But all Mercedes felt that day was _too much_ , _too loud._ Her dearest friend knew nothing about how she felt, and would not care if Mercie had the words to explain.)

They’ve been careful with each other since. Mercedes still cooks with her. They share tea and giggle over Garreg Mach’s more ridiculous mysteries: Caspar’s tendency to dive into lakes naked; Lindhardt’s ability to nap with open eyes and the right answer written down in preparation; the Gatekeeper’s true name. They do their best, and Annette still manages to get Mercedes out of bed in the morning for most of their Reason seminars. But Mercedes is too aware of their separate skin, of the pauses in conversation that they’d normally fill with light, laughing things.

They are not, Mercedes thinks, the same girls from the School of Sorcery, where Mercedes – too old, too foreign, an unusual crest turning the air to ozone around her – had welcomed Annette’s cheerful guarding. She had falled in behind the younger girl and loved her for it, and if that love shifted as they grew, until Mercedes imagined stopping that chattering mouth with her own, or wondered what songs Annette might sing when rung out and shaking in a shared bed, it had been a gentle change, one she could keep to herself.

The world seemed to move faster at the Officer’s Academy. Mercedes found herself looking more and more. At Annette, at Ingrid’s rawboned beauty, at the way Dorothea could change the expression of everyone in the room.

Annette lost herself in logic puzzles with Linhardt and demanding extra work from Professor Hanneman. She followed her father’s woebegone shadow and when she came to Mercedes it was for tea and sweets and comfort.

“We’ll stay just the same, won’t we, Mercie?” she asked more than once, and it tugged at Mercedes’s heart even more than it made her squirm, because Mercedes already felt changed.

After their argument, in the first fragile days where they stay out of each other’s way, Mercedes finds herself watching professor Byleth’s class more and more. The Black Eagles are an unsettling lot. Prickly, and fuller-up with magic than the other houses. Edelgard is self-contained in a way that speaks to Mercedes in ways she doesn’t want to think about. Hubert, seeing her heal in a practice fight, reaches out to trace a line of power from poor Ashe’s bruised ribs to her own arm.

“Healing replenishes you,” he tells her. “A dangerous skill. You could be used up that way.”

“I don’t think so,” she says, lifting Hubert’s hand away even as ozone floods her mouth and energy prickles on the inside of her skin. “I have a lot to give.”

He shakes his head, but she sees him talking to Byleth and Edelgard after the battle. When she looks at them, they look right back.

* * *

Ingrid softens slowly. It is a slow joy watching her, finding the right tea to make her eyes brighten and jaw relax. She apologies too much. Mercedes knows the habit, does not chide. She passes over cinnamon scrolls and laughs when Ingrid swallows them down too fast.

“I don’t—I don’t know why you keep inviting me,” Ingrid says.

“Because I _like you_ , you goose.”

“But…Annette is—”

“—I like her too,” Mercedes says, and her smile doesn’t twist at all. “We’ve known each other a very long time and like a lot of the same things.”

Ingrid swallows. “Whereas you and I—”

“—still have lots of wonderful chances to learn more about each other, and like lots of different things. I enjoy that, too.”

The two women eye each other over fine teacups. Ingrid’s hand shakes a little. “I wish I could enjoy things like you do, sometimes.”

“What do you mean? I’m really quite solemn, you know.”

Leather creaks as Ingrid shifts. She’s perched on Mercedes’s bed, still in flying harness, the last traces of windblown red leaving her skin. “You never seem _ashamed_ about anything,” she blurts out. “I’m always…I don’t want to be too much. I feel—I don’t want to be wasteful, or take—”

“—now _that_ just won’t do,” Mercedes says, breathless.

“Mercedes?”

“Shame is very human,” she says. She must be careful here. Must get out the words she believes with all her heart even as a small part of her laughs at her own flaws and uselssness. She doesn’t know how she can know her own words are true _and_ feel like a liar all at once, but Ingrid doesn’t need her uncertainty. “Very human, but not very useful. You don’t have to be easy with affection to deserve it, or _feel_ it. You don’t have to be worthy of someone’s friendship to have it. I think I know why you feel that way. I—” she swallows. “Growing up in the Church, it’s easy to be lost in feeling grateful, but Ingrid, dear heart, you’re _you_ , and I like you very much as you are. Nothing about you could ever be a waste.”

* * *

“I think I might try Professor Byleth’s class, if she asks me.”

The words are easier than Mercedes expects. She and Annie are sitting on Annette’s bed, and the smaller girl has her nose scrunched up in confusion. The expression is familiar and dear.

“The Black Eagles?”

“I—” Mercedes shrugs. “There’s something about Edelgard,” she says. “And Professor Jeritza. It’s a little tricky to explain—”

“—but we’re _Dimitri’s_ ,” Annette says, too loud.

“Sylvain and Felix, perhaps,” Mercedes acknowledges. “Ingrid. And Dedue of course, and Ashe wouldn’t know where else to go, poor dear. And your father, I _know_.” She reaches out, squeezes both Annette’s hands in hers. “I know you’ll go where he goes, and he’s staying right here, but I don’t belong to Faerghus any more than I belong to the Empire. I want to serve people, not kings—even lovely ones—and there’s something—”

“—The Empire doesn’t care about you at all, though,” Annette says.

“That’s a little bit the point,” says Mercedes, smiling at the exasperated look on her friend’s face. “Nothing’s certain.”

“I want you to be happy, of course,” Annette manages. “And it’s not like we won’t see each other at school every day, but Mercie…you _can’t_ change. I’d be their only healer. And I’m terrible.”

Mercedes laughs, unable to resist kissing Annette on the cheek. “I’ll teach you everything I know.”

“Is that a promise?”

“For life.”

“You’d better.” Annette sniffs. “And Ingrid will be sad.”

Mercedes flushes, the heat and awkwardness growing worse as Annette starts to smirk, “Oh, _honestly_. It’s just school. We’ll all still be here.”

“I hope so,” Annette mutters darkly. “I just… _ooof._ Why does everything have to change?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is dedicated to Ingrid and Mercedes's B support, in memory of how it killed me dead.

Mercedes does not like the training yards. Some people, she knows, are excited by sparring. Watching others at Garreg Mach makes her think that there must be something rather slow and stupid in her blood, because all she can see when Felix sneaks under Sylvain’s guard, or when Dimitri and Dedue come together like terrible, bodied ships, is sweat and the wrong sort of bruising. Today, the place is crowded, not just by Felix’s familiar shadow but with Caspar, trying to stop Edelgard’s blows with some unholy mix of gauntlets and pure energy. Her own wrists ache from the crash of it.

Most of her new house is less fond of the training yards than the Blue Lions. Caspar and Edelgard, sometimes Ferdinand, are the bright exceptions to a group that is more likely to be found in corners of the library, or setting targets on fire outside. Huburt drags her to the magical targets, sometimes; his particular brand of magic sets her teeth on edge, but he is implacable.

“You _will_ learn more offensive work,” he’s told her. “We must all protect Lady Edelgard.”

Lady Edelgard, Mercedes thinks now as the small woman flips Caspar with a huff of laughter and enough force that Mercedes can feel the shock of it move up past her knees, is better than most at looking after herself.

“Caspar? Do you need help, dear?”

He beams at her, upside down and dust streaked, from across the hall. “Nah, Mercedes. I’m good.”

“Just be careful.”

Felix, his own bout won, snorts. “Couldn’t mother us all, so you found a new house?” 

It stings more than it should. Mercedes is caught up in the scalding embarrassment of a half-finished conversation. Cold tea and abandoned cookies, Felix as hostile as he is wounded.

(“I am _not_ your little brother.”) 

A new long shadow leans in the doorway. “Felix,” Ingrid says. “Do I need to knock some sense into you?”

He groans. “You’re _late_.”

(“ _Too_ late, maybe.” Who else for that comment but Sylvain.)

“Quiet, you.”

Mercedes isn’t sure which of the boys Ingrid is talking to, but they both react as if they’re both culprit and victim, all big sighs and sneaked looks and shuffling. Ingrid raps Felix sharply on the head, spots of colour high in her cheeks, and walks across the training yard to Mercedes.

Mercedes almost expects Ingrid’s smile. She does not expect a steady, warm arm around her waist. The other girl smells of horse and skin and a little of lavender soap. Golden hair tickles Mercie’s cheek. They are almost of a height. This is a silly thing to notice – Goddess, it’s been true since they all started at the Academy and hardly remarkable – but Mercedes is more used to holding than being held, and she is _very_ used to looming over most of the women at the monastery.

She knows she is big and soft and clumsy in comparison to Annette’s lithe grace or Edelgard’s delicate ferocity or Lysithea’s barely-contained impulse to _do_ and _be_ and _want_ everything at once. She is used to them flying all to pieces. But Ingrid’s hold now is protective, as if she’s the one who needs comfort, and Mercedes can’t help but laugh a little, lean into that embrace.

“What’s this?” she asks, startled when Ingrid, still holding her, husltles them out of the training yards with nothing more than a glare at Felix and Sylvain. 

Ingrid scowls. She says nothing until they’re well clear of the door and the noise. She does not draw back. “You looked sad. Felix can be thoughtless.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. He’s just—”

“—a thoughtless git?”

“I was going to say ‘sad’.”

“That doesn’t excuse him!” Ingrid slowly pulls away, bringing her hands together in an annoyed tangle. Sunlight catches at the hair falling from her braid, glints off tensed eyebrows. “I know better than anyone why he’s the way he is, but _I_ don’t hurt people. Not on purpose.”

Mercedes reaches out. Tugs at one of Ingrid’s hands until it stops clenching. They’re strong hands. Calloused and nicked with sword scars. The nails blunt, but clean and well cared for. She presses her thumb into Ingrid’s palm, traces slow and heavy circles.

“Thank you,” she says. Her voice comes out lower and thicker than it’s meant to, and Ingrid is looking down at their joined hands and Mercedes isn’t sure if she wants to laugh or cry. She aims for lightness, instead. “You were _very_ chivalrous, lady knight.”

“Oh! Um…hardly, Mercedes. Not at all.”

Mercedes grins. She can feel it. Her cheeks ache. “Very much so,” she murmurs, taking a careful step back so their joined hands are now the only things touching. She squeezes Ingrid’s fingers, then carefully lets each fall. “Why, you nearly swept me off my feet!”

* * *

It was a mistake to gripe. It usually is. Mercedes never minds hearing anyone else’s troubles – it touches her deeply when someone lays their woes in her hands as if she can smooth their edges. And today, without Annette, who would already know, and _with_ Ingrid, who surely knows more about her sort of trouble than most of their friends at Garreg Mach, she—

—she is making too much of this. As usual. She is untouchable until at least the end of the year. There is time yet. She does not need to reply to her adopted father’s letters in haste, and Ingrid _is_ the right person to talk to of obliglation and abnegation. She knows what she wants to tell Ingrid about Baron Galatea. 

Mercedes does not know why hearing similar words about her _own_ adopted father is so uncomfortable.

Besides, she thinks, looking at the empty teacups and the rumpled, lavender-ghosted spot where Ingrid likes to sit in Mercedes’s room. In truth, the letter hardly matters now. All she can hear is the warmth in Ingrid’s voice when she’d said, stern-and-smiling: _“Sounds to me like you need a strategy to silence your father…. sever all ties and run away.”_

Her breath had caught. She’d seen it. The two of them, like something out of the stories she did not know how to tell. Escape from shadowy bedrooms via knotted sheets, the two of them bramble-scratched and quick anxious kisses and needing to be _quiet_ — _so_ quiet. A midnight escape, watched over only by stars and stray ghosts. There’d be a star chart. A Pegasus. The warmth of Ingrid’s body as Mercedes, never a strong rider, held on tight, her mouth pressed hard into the other woman’s shoulder to stifle her prayers as they flew.

They’d never look back. Not once.

Instead, Mercedes had only smiled. “ _I wouldn’t go that far_ ,” she’d lied, truthfully.

Now, sitting in the remnants of their tea party, Mercedes lets her mind drift back to a barely possible sky.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mercedes is sick. Ingrid does her best.

No one ever talks about Faith magic and colds. Well, not more than once, anyway. It is, Mercedes thinks, pulling blankets up to her chin and grimacing at the feel of sheets bunched up under her tired, aching body, _far_ too depressing.

“It makes no sense, girl,” her adopted father told her during an unhappy summer away from the School of Sorcery. He’d been on the edge of feverish when most people felt and acted their most unpleasant, head full of snot and eyes full of scorn. “What’s the use of an expensive education and a gift from the Goddess if you can’t fix a simple thing?”

She had said nothing then. No one wanted to hear that most illnesses were rarely simple; that Faith magic worked best on blunt trauma. She’d made tea, and he hadn’t thrown it at the wall. She’d said nothing about the way her teachers used to make each of the students try and heal a cold, or a flu, just to feel the heaviness of it, the way it was easier to clear lungs than sinuses. Colds are _persistent_. No one ever wants to hear that. 

Now, sweat collecting in unspeakable places, the air spiking her from the back of her tongue all the way down past her tonsils, Mercedes wishes someone would apply blunt trauma to her head.

Her friends do their best. If she could only smell, Mercedes knows her room would be thick with chamomile and mint and lavender, fresh every morning, thanks to Ashe and Dedue. Ferdinand, of all people, brings in tea. Well, he stays in the doorway while Caspar brings in the tea on a tray, but the thought does count. Annie’s willow and honey mix is getting _much_ better, and Mercie knows her throat would feel much worse without it. Sylvain, apparently up to the eyebrows in Faith magic because of “Some whim of Professor Manuela’s”, rests a big hand on her forehead and tries to do something about the headache.

Mercedes does not try any of Linhardt’s experiments—even the ones Petra insists are improved with ginger—though she _does_ promise to look them over when she is feeling better.

Hubert and Felix make an unlikely pair clearing most people out of her room, while if anyone can cure a cold, it might be Bernadetta, armed with soup. 

“Are you awake, Mercedes? Ah—”

When Ingrid peers into her room, Mercedes is hunched in bed, hair tangled, face buried in a handkerchief.

“Don’t—” Mercedes winces. “I’m _revolting_.”

“Ah,” Ingrid says. “You’re dramatic when ill. Always good to know.”

There is a rustling as Imgrid steps closer to the bed. She adjusts the curtains, picks up an abandoned shawl and lets the soft brown fabric drape over her hands while Mercedes squints at her, trying to get her eyes to focus.

“You’re more a Felix than a Sylvain,” Ingrid says. “You’d think Sylvain would be an absolute bear when ill, but his parents are—well. They’re a little bit terrible. So he learnt to just get on with things. Felix, of course—” an eye-roll, “ _Never_ gets sick, so whenever it happens the world is ending.”

Mercedes groans. “I think I’m insulted.”

“Oh, you should be, Ingrid says placidly. She’s folded the shawl. Dimly, Mercedes is surprised the other woman knows where it lives in her wardrobe. Ingrid is soon sitting by the bedside, looking down at her as if there is something to smile about.

“They’re very lucky,” Mercedes says.

“Hmm?”

“Those boys,” she manages. “You’re really very nice and they’re lucky to have you.”

“Oh hush,” Ingrid says. She lets the back of one hand skate over Mercedes’ forehead. “You have me too. Not that I can do much. I just thought to keep you company.”

“You’re good. Good company.”

“And _you_ are ridiculous.” Ingrid is blushing, now, her hands back in her lap and twisting together. “I could…read, if you like? To you? I have some stories.”

Mercedes laughs, though it turns into a small cry as her throat scrapes raw – all of this is _really_ quite undignified and horrible and she’d much rather be nursing now than laid out sore and strange like this. “The Sword of Kyphon?” she rasps. “Loog and the Maiden of Wind?”

“It doesn’t have to be!” Ingrid snaps. “I mean, it’s not as if they’re the only stories I—I just really love them, and—”

“—Ingrid—”

“—and there ghosts, too. In the Maiden of Wind. I know you like ghosts, and—”

“— _Ingrid_ , you misunderstand,” Mercedes says, reaching for one of Ingrid’s hands and holding it fast as the effort of that tiny shout leaves her chest heaving. She is a fright. Hair sticking every which way. She hopes her hand isn’t damp. Ingrid is looking at her, all flushed cheeks and defensive eyebrows.

“Please read me everything you like,” says Mercedes. “It makes me happy that you want to share.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little one today, dedicated to my girl who has been ill. We're coming up to the ball (and perhaps even the Goddess Tower) very soon. Thank you to everyone who's left reviews and and kudos. It means a lot!


	5. Chapter 5

Annette holds court in Ingrid’s bedroom. They are all on the floor, cushions that she and Mercedes have dragged in piled around him. She crouches in front of Mercedes, head tilted as she surveys her work.

“See, Ingrid? She has such _blue_ eyes that you want to make sure they stand out a little. Oranges and browns. It’s science.”

Ingrid is frowning. “Science?”

“Well, it’s colour theory,” says Annette. “I read about it. Ask Ignatz. There’s a reason all the frescoes work with greens. It’s meant to be calm and Goddessy and works well with gold, which is—Mercie, stop _laughing_.”

“—I’m--I’m sorry, Annie. But _Goddessy_?” Mercedes grins. Her lips taste a little of rose and pressed powder.

Ingrid stares at them both as if they were eerie, alien creatures. She takes a big step backward.

“—Honestly, Annie.”

“It’s true!” Annette says, shaking her head. “There is serious theory. Greens go with golds and bronzes and purples. And that’s _you_ , Ingrid. Don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

“I’m not—”

“—I’m afraid you are, dear,” says Mercedes.

Ingrid shakes her head, hopeless. “Retreating in my own domain,” she mutters. “Embarrassing.”

“Only if we _let_ it be embarrassing,” Annette says. “C’mon. Mercie’s done. Isn’t she pretty?”

Now Mercedes wants to throw a water glass. It’s unfair. None of this is any different from how they all usually talk, but Ingrid is splotchy with colour and Mercedes, looking down, is sure her face is much the same. The air is too sweet, too thick, her friend too knowing.

“M-Mercedes is _always_ pretty.”

“Aw,” Annette says. “That’s no answer, Ingrid.”

Looking at Ingrid, watching the other girl bite her lip as her eyes move over Mercedes’s face, Mercedes thinks it is.

Annette does get her wish in the end. Ingrid, granite-still and forgetting to breath under hands as she applies bronzes and purples to her heart’s content. Mercedes looks on, fixing Annette’s braids with quick fingers. Moving to pour tea and adjust the curtains and candles for better light as the night crawls on.

“Who is your dancer,” she asks. “For the the Cup tomorrow. Everyone has been _so_ quiet.”

She does not expect both Ingrid and Annette to snort.

“Who is it?” Mercedes prods. “I know it isn’t either of you. Is it Ashe?” a horrified pause. “Sylvain _didn’t_ , did he?”

“It’s Felix,” Ingrid says, forgetting her discomfort as she grins, eyes crinkling in a delightful way that is doing very unkind things to Annette’s paint.

“Ingrid!” Annette snaps. “It was a surprise.”

“Oh, but I have to tell someone,” Ingrid says. “This week has been torture.” A beat. “Of course, that’s what Felix said. He’s very good, you know. All of us learnt together when we were tiny.”

Mercedes settles back down between the two of them, half in Annette’s lap, her hands reaching for Ingrid. “That’s a very sweet image.”

“We all _hated_ it, of course.” Ingrid says, smile rueful. “Until Glenn told us all it was good for stamina and coordination. And then Felix took it as a challenge.” She sighs, toys with Mercedes fingers. Looking at her, Mercedes sees a bright fleck of mica on Ingrid’s cheek. She leans forward, kisses the spot. Is careful not to react as Ingrid tenses slightly under this new touch.

“You’re still very bad, Ingrid.” Annette says, with a mock scowl. “I worked _hard_ not to tell, and we don’t know who the Black Eagles are bringing up. Though if it _is_ you, Mercie—”

“Oh, hush,” Mercedes says. “I did offer, but it’s not me.” She stretches, lets out a small sigh of relief as a bubble of air trapped in her shoulder decides to pop. “It’s Linhardt. I wonder who is less happy with the role?”

Annette giggles.

* * *

The White Heron Cup is noisy and too full of people, most of whom looking confused about why they are there. Mercedes has one arm in Annette’s, paying attention with only half an ear as the other woman grumbles about too many tall bodies and not enough wine. She can see professor Byleth in earnest conversation with Linhardt, their hands on the other healer’s shoulders, fingers drumming out a pattern on the starched fabric of his uniform. 

None of the contestants, Annie had told Mercedes earlier that day with a woebegone expression, were performing in proper dancer garb. 

Alois is announcing everyone as if they were truly at a ball, his big laugh filling the room. Shamir is an exasperated right-hand shadow, Manuela resplendent on his other side.

Ingrid, Mercedes can see, is with Felix, the two of them small pools of quiet in the noisy room. She slaps his shoulder. He offers a half smile, quickly lost.

“Mercie, Mercie _look_.”

“Hmm?”

“I think Ingrid’s wearing the eyeshadow I gave her,” Annette says. “A bit heavy, but _ooh,_ I’m so proud. Wasn’t that fun?” she grins. “Go say how nice she looks.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Find a bench,” Annette says. “Stand on it and ogle Felix.”

“Annette!”

“What?” Annette says. “He’s cruel and unusual, but he’s very pretty.”

Mercedes laughs as she hugs her. “We’ll go up together. You can wish him luck. You goose.”

“I love you, too.”

* * *

(When Claude steps up as the Golden Deer representative, no one is prepared.)


	6. Chapter 6

The first time Dorothea offers up tea in a chipped mug in a corner of the Black Eagles officer’s mess, over-steeped and thick with tannin, it takes Mercedes a while to realise she’s meant to be shocked.

The other woman looks at her over the rim of her own cup with narrowed eyes, waiting for—does she expect a grimace? A ladylike moue of distaste, as the novels say? There’s nothing like well-brewed albinean tea when it’s cold, and it reminds Mercedes very much of what the clerics used to share with petitioners. She and her mother huddled around their own chipped mugs, which they then washed, and handed to other people who needed them. She beams.

“Thank you, Dorothea,” she says, taking a large sip. “This is so nostalgic.”

“I admit…” Dorothea’s face scrunches up. Rather winningly, Mercedes thinks. No one with as much control over her face and voice as the Mittelfrank Opera’s youngest diva would make any unstudied gesture, but the attempt is very sweet.

“Mercie,” she says, “I am afraid I do _not_ understand you.”

Mercedes laughs. “That’s quite all right. People are tricky. This tea is _lovely_ , did you think I’d scorn it? I’m not nearly as fancy as you seem to think.”

“You’re—you’re certainly something,” Dorothea says. She takes a gulp from her own mug. “Why did you join us? Not just to make the professor happy, surely? Because if you’re waiting for an expression on _their_ face—”

“ –not at all!” Mercedes says. She shakes her head. “I do think they’re a very good teacher, but it your Edelgard, actually.”

“Edie?” Dorothea’s smile softens, turns into a tucked away, secret thing that Mercedes doesn’t think she’s aware of. “What did she ask you? I mean, she could ask the trees to turn early and they’d go red and gold for her, but still.”

“ _That’s_ an image!”

Dorothea sighs, setting her cup aside and pushing her cap further back on her head. “I get poetical, don’t mind me. And don’t dodge the question.”

“Oh my, you noticed?”

“I notice everything, Mercie.”

 _Not quite._ Mercedes sighs. “It’s really nothing special. I have…a complicated family. Edelgard knows about it, the way people always find out about these things in a place like this, and she asked if I cared.”

“About your family?”

“About my Crest,” Mercedes corrects, gentle. “And it _is_ very useful, of course, which I said. But it’s like any gift. It’s like your voice, or Annie’s head for numbers, or Linhardt’s strange ability to sleep through half of his lessons and still get full marks. Gifts are best when they’re a surprise, and gratefully received and shared when they can be. But I _don’t_ think anyone should breed for them. It’s…disgusting.”

“And you told Edelgard all that?”

She’s spoken far too long and far too loudly. She feels flushed and awkward, not the calm, oddly righteous way she’d felt in Edelgard’s presence. In front of Dorothea, Mercedes thinks, most people become uncomfortably human. “Well, not those exact words, not those examples, but yes. The rest of it.”

Dorothea’s smile has changed again, bright and fierce and wide enough that her face is no longer a studied, perfect thing. “You think the nobility are _disgusting_?”

“Not in so many words, no—”

“—you do! Admit it!”

“The _concept_ is disgusting,” Mercedes admits. She doesn’t know why she’s whispering, but they both have their heads bent close together now, foreheads almost touching over their small tea table. “Because of the way it shapes lives, makes differences that hurt people and raise some people up for doing nothing except…existing. I don’t know what I’d put in its place, but Edelgard…she’s the least _noble_ of the nobility I’ve ever met, and I think she’s trying to change things.”

“You’re in my opera now,” Dorothea declares. “Mercedes von Martriz, the revolutionary nun.” 

“I have _never_ —”

“—well,” says Dorothea. “Perhaps not a _nun_ , not with the way you look at Ingrid. And don’t worry—” this, to a chorus of splutters, her hands spread wide. “Ingrid _is_ looking at you right back.”

“You are terrible.”

“I know,” says Dorothea. “But you deserve it. I spent a whole _week_ with Ingrid and the professor in Ailell, you know, and all she’d talk about was Mercedes this, Mercedes that…even after I chased her would-be groom into a sinkhole full of lava. It’s extremely provoking.”

“He really was bad, then?”

“The _worst_.”

“A sinkhole full of lava?”

“And she looked at me with big, lovely eyes and said _thank you, Dorothea,_ and then asked me what I thought _you’d_ like for a Midwinter present. Ugh.”

“Oh dear.”

Dorothea snorts. “Don’t feign sympathy for me, you witch.” A sigh. “I’ll just keep adding strings to my bow, no fear.”

“You could change the world with Edelgard,” Mercedes says, feeling a little wicked as the other woman blushes well past her collar.

“I—you—you are actually horrible, and no one notices,” Dorothea says. “It’s very unsettling. But tell me, now that I know your little secret, what do you think whenever Ferdie von Aegir starts going on and _on_ about his—”

“—Duties of the Noble,” they chorus, dissolving into laugher.

* * *

“There,” Annette says, retying Mercedes’ hair ribbon. “You’re all set.”

“Thank you, sweet.” Mercedes looks at herself in the mirror. Is not displeased. In candlelight, she is soft and clear-skinned, hair taking up the light in a way she hopes will be mirrored in the ballroom. Annette, beside her, is elfin and more serious than usual in formal academy robes, taking Mercedes hand and squeezing it.

“I think we’re ready,” Annette says. “Well, I am. Ingrid thinks we’re all meeting here in oh, five minutes? But I lied.”

“Annie!”

“Well, um,” Annette says, still not looking away from Mercedes’s outraged face in the mirror. “This way we got some time together, and then _you two_ will have time together. I won’t be out of sorts _and_ I won’t be in the way.”

It is suddenly hard to breathe around the lump in her throat. “Annette Fantine Dominic,” she manages, trying to sound like someone’s mother because it’s that or start running around in anxious circles, “You could _never_ be in the way.”

“I can think of a few situations,” Annette says, gentle. She squeezes Mercedes’ hand again.

“You’re my best friend, Annie.”

“I know, but you don’t want to kiss me.”

“I—” Mercedes splutters. Her free hand moves toward her face, but Annette pulls it back with a cry about not even _thinking_ of ruining all her handiwork.

“That’s a little unfair, you know,” Mercedes manages.

“Is it?” They’re not talking about makeup. Annette is flushed, almost glaring. “I don’t notice these things like some people. It can be a problem.”

“Oh, _An—_ “

“—and it’s not like I want to kiss you, besides!” Annette says. “I don’t. I really, really don’t. Or anyone else. Not yet. Maybe not ever? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. You _are_ my best friend and I _don’t_ want to kiss you and you _do_ want to kiss Ingrid and I just—I think we’ve been dancing around that for a while, don’t you?”

They’re both breathing hard. Still staring at their reflections. Hands still entwined. Annette’s chin is trembling, lip caught between her teeth, and Mercedes feels wonder and pride uncurl in her chest. It all comes out as a rush of air. A small _oh_ , more felt than heard.

“We’ve all changed a bit, haven’t we?” Annette says. “I think that’s all right, now.” 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Promises are made in the Goddess Tower. Not all of them, but some.

Her mother used to tell stories of balls. They were bright, glorious things where the light could cut and no one had enough air to breathe, between all the bodies and the perfume. Ladies fainted. There were beautiful shoes to be trod upon by the unlucky. Lords fainted too. Collar fashions were _very_ tight in those days. 

Mercedes used to listen with her brother and ask if she had danced, because she knew the answer. Of course her mother danced. She was the most beautiful woman in the world.

Mercie supposes a lot mothers are, to their children. At least when you were lucky. The stories were gentle ghosts. A sweet ache. 

None of her mother’s stories included Caspar and Raphael trying to force Linhardt to adjudicate an arm-wrestling contest.

(“C’mon, Lin. I need to beat this guy.”

“I did not get out of bed for this. Or put on my best shoes.”

“How’re they any different from your normal— _hey_.”)

There might be stories about people like Bernadetta hiding behind potted plants, Mercedes thinks, but probably not with Felix leaning forward to ask the cowering girl about evasive maneuvers. She watches Sylvain laugh and dance and pour some of the punch into Bernie’s plant. When he catches her eye, he winks at her, mouthing “S-p-i-k-e-d” across the room.

He is a good boy, really. Sylvain will grow up well.

Dorothea is never without partners. She even dances with Hubert, once. Mercedes isn’t quite sure how either of them muster up the courage.

She watches Annette coax Ashe into a reel. The music is the best part, she thinks. Her mother could conjure smells and good food and glittering crystal, but her stories couldn’t pluck strings or count in infectious mixes of threes and sixes and eights. The world is clamorous and much too warm, but there is something lovely about watching her friends while her whole body vibrates like a violin. The music is in her fingertips. Down her spine and between her teeth. 

Ludicrous thoughts. It’s a good thing no one hear them.

“Er, Mercedes?”

Ingrid has an owl feather in her hair.

“Oh, hello Ingrid. You’re finally back.”

They’d been caught in different social eddies after entering the ballroom. Felix and Sylvain had come around Ingrid like wildly unmatched bookends, and Mercie, still raw from her words with Annette, had found the warmest corner, letting people come to her. A small selfishness.

“I’m a terrible escort,” Ingrid says. “Forgive me?”

“Oh?” Something sweeter than the music uncurls in Mercedes’ throat. “You're my _escort?”_ She lets her eyes widen; her voice softens. It might be a little mean to tease, but Ingrid is in front of her. She is golden and blushing, and there are freckles in secret places like her eyelids and the insides of her wrist. She has an owl feather in her hair. 

“My father would be appalled,” Ingrid says. She swallows.

Those words have weight, Mercedes thinks. Between us.

“Dance with me?” The words come out in the rush, in the same tone that Mercedes remembers when Ingrid still wasn’t sure what to do with bread dough and turned to a sticky mess all the way up her arms. It sounds like “… _help.”_

Mercedes takes both her hands. “Of course.”

* * *

Dancing is a spinning laughing awkward mess. Mercedes feels her hands on her back and the weight of her own hair as a securing ribbon loosens and the way Ingrid’s body tries to yield to her own, even when she’s the one doing her best to lead.

“I was always stuck doing _girl_ parts at home,” Ingrid says. “They’d never let me lead. It’s not _proper,_ Ingrid.”

“I can’t think what you mean,” Mercedes says breathless. “I _like_ girl parts very much, you know.”

Green eyes widen. “You can’t just _say that_.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ingrid splutters. “You can’t seriously—oh, _you_.”

They’re almost still now, in the middle of the floor, as Ingrid rests her forehead against Mercedes’ own.

“You make me dizzy,” Ingrid mumbles, and something tugs in Mercedes’ chest.

“Here,” she says, shifting her hold and very grateful that the Lady von Martriz had not cared particularly about dancing roles, and had let Mercedes and Emile both spin her across bedrooms and kitchens and, once, an echoing and empty church to keep warm in Fearghus winter. “Let me.”

“I’ll learn,” Ingrid says, flushed all the way to her ears. “You’ll see. You don’t always have to take care of m—of things.”

Lips against her hot cheek. “I _like_ taking care of you,” Mercedes says. 

_Goddess._ Mercedes isn’t sure what’s in her. No wine. Only music and Ingrid’s slow swallow; the mix of dance and heartbeat in the palms of her hands at the other woman’s waist. She feels pure and wicked and frayed at all her edges, and just right.

Their dance ends more elegantly than it starts. Smiles and cheek kisses and the slow release of hands as other couples move about them. Ingrid casts a longing look at the refreshment tables.

“I’m starving,” Ingrid says. She pauses, shakes her head. “Don’t laugh, I know how that sounds, but dancing is work.” 

“I’d never laugh,” Mercedes says, smiling. “Not in a mean-spirited sort of way. Besides, I could eat.”

“I have a plan,” Ingrid says. Her is too broad for conspiracy, and Mercedes loves it. “Find some big napkins.”

* * *

They smuggle cakes and fruit to the Goddess Tower, Ingrid moving with fierce purpose. She has, much to Mercie’s shock, a blanket folded up small in one of her pockets. A waterproof fieldwork affair, able to roll up small on campaign. Ingrid unfurls it, running a sheepish hand over the creases, and moonlight spills down onto them both from the thick-paned tower windows. The light is diffuse, and Mercedes shivers, imagining it as liquid on her skin.

“Are you cold?”

“Only a little. It was _very_ warm in there.” She settles onto the blanket, unwrapping a napkin full of greenhouse strawberries. They’re only a little bruised from their adventures. “Ingrid, did you _plan_ this?”

“I—like food. And places to eat it where people don’t stare. I know some people do. It’s just hard to let anything go to waste here, after years of—well. I find places.”

“I look,” Mercedes says.

“Oh. Um. It’s not _so_ strange. I have manners!” she groans. “But not a hole to crawl into, apparently.”

Mercedes picks up a berry. Rests it, brief, against Ingrid’s lower lip. “Hush,” Mercedes says. “I watch because food makes you happy and I want to know what dishes make you _happiest_. I watch because I like watching you.”

Ingrid swallows, then lets her mouth close around the fruit.

They are mostly silent for their feast. It fits the air. The serious business of eating. The slow rest of their bodies and the giggling whispers of other couples who approach the tower but never quite go in.

“Do you know the legend of this place?” Mercedes asks, when the space between them is mostly full of crumbs.

“The Goddess Tower?” Ingrid frowns. “Of course. If a man and a woman make a promise here, it’s binding, is it not?”

“The way I always heard it,” Mercedes says, soft. “There doesn’t have to be a _man_. The couple vow, and it comes true.”

“Oh.”

Mercedes feels part of the blanket bunch beneath her as Ingrid tugs at it. Small, restless movements.

“Well,” Ingrid says, with a small smile. “I’ll just have to be careful not to make any promises.”

“There’s a few I’d make,” says Mercedes.

“Mercedes—”

“—oh, nothing _too_ —I know, you see. We both know. We can’t always choose the people we spend our lives with. The people we’re promised to. But I can still make promises that I can keep to myself. Between us.” Mercledes shudders. “I’m not making sense, am I?”

“What promises?” It’s a whisper. Ingrid leans forward, and the moonlight silvers her cheek; the swell of her lower lip; the owl feather in her hair. The Goddess’s luck, tucked into a long braid full of flyaways.

“To care?” Mercedes says. “I can promise that. To care and notice and write when you’re away and feed y—“

—they’re kissing. Almost. Ingrid misses her mouth. Warmth drags from her cheek and she turns her head a little and then it’s better. It’s laughing and the right sort of wet and the brief shock of teeth on her lower lip.

“Let me care, too.” Ingrid whispers. “I…I can’t promise _not_ too. And that’s not very romantic. I’m no good at this.”

“Oh no,” Mercedes says, tugging the feather free and smoothing it, before tapping Ingrid’s cheek with one end. “No lies. That’s a promise, too. You are _very_ good, Lady Knight.”

Ingrid laughs, ducking her head. “Is this real? You _are_ that silly every day, I suppose.”

“You noticed!”

By the time the moon has moved from their window, the two are curled up together, laughing and full up, without repletion anywhere in sight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it. (Or is it?) Happy Valentine's to my own best beloved, and I hope everyone has enjoyed this mix of character study and fluff. I do have other stories for this universe, but we're approaching some dark times and I wanted to end the first part on a happy note. Thank you so much to everyone who's left kudos and reviews. It's been lovely to write again.


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